By gr on 2006-11-19

Nov 19, 2006

For some of you, this post might be worth a lot since no photos are allowed, and this show is hard to get to. I took a bunch of discreet photos. Wunderground is a show of work from Providence or should I say Olneyville's (the tiny town closeby) finest. It's a show of work from Ft. Thunder... Slowly the Fort is becoming a distant memory instead of a near one. One of our friends Brian Ralph was a founding member. I remember calling him at the Fort, for project ideas and so on. He used the describe the place as being a spot where you needed to have shoes. He also would tell me how girls wouldn't like being there. I never got to visit which is a regret, but this show helps a little.

Amy opens the door for me. The show gets good billing on the facade of the building. It's great to see the RISD museum give these kids some credit they deserve.

This is one of the first things you see when you walk into the big room of installation pieces. It's huge.

I walked inside... When you pull on these ropes, bells, cymbals, and more. See the below photo.

Taken straight up, we're still inside of the first big room.

Walking around that first struction, this is what you see. Let's go towards the left building, I see a doorway over there. Common!

Unmistakably, this is Brian Chippendale's work. He has a CD of his side band playing.

For scale... I bet you thought a person could walk into that doorway on the bottom right. But no, it's small.

So walking out of B. Chip's room, there's this structure that has music coming out of the tubes. Not all tubes play the music, but it's pretty neat. Let's go by this music box and then go left.

Whoa... I dunno what this was, but it had this weird diorama in the middle. The sides were made of soft paper.

I passed this one up when I walked in. It's on the right.

This was on the left. You walk in, and pow! This huge beast's arm moves. Is this one by Leif Goldberg?

Slightly wider view. The piece behind it, I didn't get a shot of. The photo police roamed around at that time. Look above that noise tunnel piece... it's lit up like an alien beacon.

After leaving that room, it's time to see the prints. Tons of them. Thousands... This is what Ft. Thunder was known for. Silkscreening wrecklessly.

I looked and found a few Brian Ralph pieces mixed in.

Ft. Thunder is slowly building it's name back up, and I'm sure this is just a start. There's a catalog for Wunderground. It just begins to portray the story of who these guys are, what their space was all about. I'd think the book would need to be triple the size, with tons more photos. I propose someone do a show where the entire Fort is reproduced with mechanical dudes.